2

Any tips on what could be wrong?

The machine has 8GB of RAM

memtest runs fine, tests and passes all 8GB

But...

  • top
  • htop
  • free -m

all report 1,9GB ram as system memory

BUT... lshw sees the ram sticks.

lshw -short -c memory outputs:

H/W path             Device      Class       Description
========================================================
(snip CPU cache)
/0/e                             memory      8GiB System Memory
/0/e/0                           memory      2GiB FB-DIMM DDR2 FB-DIMM 667 MHz (1,5 ns)
/0/e/1                           memory      2GiB FB-DIMM DDR2 FB-DIMM 667 MHz (1,5 ns)
/0/e/2                           memory      1GiB FB-DIMM DDR2 FB-DIMM 667 MHz (1,5 ns)
/0/e/3                           memory      1GiB FB-DIMM DDR2 FB-DIMM 667 MHz (1,5 ns)
/0/e/4                           memory      [empty]
/0/e/5                           memory      [empty]
/0/e/6                           memory      1GiB FB-DIMM DDR2 FB-DIMM 667 MHz (1,5 ns)
/0/e/7                           memory      1GiB FB-DIMM DDR2 FB-DIMM 667 MHz (1,5 ns)

OS is Ubuntu 22.04 current and any other ubuntu flavour I've tried.

And yes this is one of those weird apple machines with 64bit CPUs but 32bit EFI but that's another topic -- also there's no mention of EFI in /sys/firmware/ so Ubuntu boots in Bios mode and the 32bit EFI doesn't get a say.

DM8
  • 630
  • In one spot you say your are running Ubuntu 22 this is a Ubuntu Core version. In another you say Ubuntu 22.04. Please edit and correct the question as to what the actual version is. – David Apr 08 '23 at 06:52
  • update: this showed up in the 'related' links after a day (I had tried but failed to find anything like this before when searching): https://askubuntu.com/questions/1303469/only-2gb-of-32gb-ram-recognised-on-ubuntu-20-04?rq=1 I'll give it a shot and report back later. – DM8 Apr 08 '23 at 09:24

1 Answers1

2

So, before posting this, my attempts at searching for info had failed. The day after I posted this there was a gem in the 'related' links here: https://askubuntu.com/a/1311206/19550

I updated both:

Mac Pro EFI Firmware Update 1.1 https://support.apple.com/kb/DL309

Mac Pro SMC Firmware Update 1.1 https://support.apple.com/kb/dl222

For me, both were painless updates because I had a working hdd with a macOSX 10.7.5 suitable for that machine. I was very lucky.

System information, before update:

 Boot ROM Version:  MP11.005C.B00 
 SMC Version (system):  1.7f6

after update:

 Boot ROM Version:  MP11.005C.B04
 SMC Version (system):  1.7f10

That's all it took and after an hdd swap back to Ubuntu 22.04... now free -m shows:

                 total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   
 available
 Mem:            7925         542        6756           3         626        7146
 Swap:          15257           0       15257

I have no idea how one would go about updating the firmware without access to such an OS, and as far as I know, it is essentially impossible to install a fresh copy of this OS because it's too old and the outdated https certificate validation will fail, which you will need to use during the installation process to login with appleID. (I failed to install a fresh copy with my copy of DVD installation media, or with Recovery. YMMV)

DM8
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